NORTH FACE CO-FOUNDER QUIT FASHION TO SAVE PATAGONIA
Douglas Tompkins co-founded The North Face and Esprit, then walked away from the clothing business and spent the rest of his life buying up wilderness in Chile and Argentina so it could become national parks. He did it with his wife, Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, after growing disillusioned with consumerism and its environmental costs, Smiley Movement reported in a profile published April 24, 2026.
It is a hard career change to top. One day he was running fashion brands, and the next he was in southern South America buying land to give away.
From racks of clothes to millions of acres
National Geographic reported that The North Face began as a small retail and mail-order business in San Francisco. Tompkins sold it before launching the women’s clothing business that became Esprit, and he later sold his interest in Esprit for $125 million.
According to Tompkins Conservation, he left the business world in 1990 and began acquiring private land for conservation through his nonprofit foundation in 1991. The couple’s stated goal was to restore ecosystems and hand the land back to the public as national parks.
Smiley Movement said Tompkins viewed conservation as “paying rent.” The profile presented it as his idea of humanity’s duty to the planet.
He also set up the Foundation for Deep Ecology, which backs biodiversity protection and challenges industrial-growth models through grants, publications and advocacy. Tompkins Conservation, the couple’s organization, coordinated land restoration, species reintroduction and park creation, working with governments. A big part of the approach was rewilding, meaning active repair of damaged ecosystems and wildlife populations.
It was not a smooth ride. Early projects, including Pumalín Park, met skepticism and political resistance. National Geographic reported that his conservation efforts frequently put him at odds with local ranchers and government officials.
By the time of National Geographic’s 2015 report, the land he and his wife had acquired in Chile had reached 2.2 million acres.
The parks outlived him
Tompkins died in 2015 after a kayaking accident in Chile. The North Face said in a statement, “Doug was a passionate advocate for the environment,” and added, “His legacy of conservation will help ensure that there are outdoor spaces to be explored for generations to come.”
The work went on without him. Tompkins Conservation says Pumalín received official nature sanctuary status in 2005 and was designated a national park in 2018. The group says its donation of almost 725,000 acres helped create the roughly 1-million-acre Pumalín Douglas Tompkins National Park, which protects 25 percent of the remaining population of alerce trees.
The United Nations Environment Programme said Kristine McDivitt Tompkins and her partners worked with the Chilean and Argentine governments to create parks spanning millions of hectares. Smiley Movement put the total at more than a dozen parks created or expanded, while the group’s own Explore Chile page lists 16 national and provincial parks it helped create or expand across the two countries.
Deutsche Welle reported that the handover to Chile included Pumalín and Patagonia parks. On April 26, 2019, Tompkins Conservation formally transferred both to the Chilean state. The transfer completed a 2017 agreement to create new national parks and expand others, using the group’s donation and land contributed by Chile.
The parks cover a combined 994,332 acres, and Tompkins Conservation donated 724,853 of them.
The conservation work has continued since. On September 22, 2026, Tompkins Conservation reported the publication of a scientific study identifying biodiversity risks in Patagonia’s giant kelp forests, which compares current marine surveys with data collected 50 years earlier.
